Ms. Ginny Strazisar

Bio/Description

She wrote the first internet working router (then called “gateway”) software for the new TCP/IP protocols. On August 27, 1976, the ‘bread truck’ – as it was often called — first used TCP to bridge the gap between the Arpanet and this packet radio setup. Sitting outside a former stage coach stop somewhere between San Francisco and Monterey, California, it fired an email across the two networks, shuttling packets through a makeshift gateway developed by BBN. The first trials stayed one radio hop from the Packet Radio station (the PRNET's controlling node) where the bidirectional ARPANET gateway software she built at BBN was located. During July and August the SRI team tested and tuned Mathis' version of TCP for better accuracy and speed. It was in August of 1976 that a terminal, attached to an LSI-11 "host" running TCP that was in turn attached to the PRNET, proceeded through a gateway to first access an ARPANET host. For the first time, at least in a ceremonial sense, dissimilar networks were bridged by TCP, thus clearly creating a two-network internet connection. Other two-network TCP connections would soon follow. Then The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) added a third network to the mix: a packet satellite extravaganza that spanned the US, the United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, and Italy. The Arpanet already extended to the UK and to Norway, but for political reasons, DARPA had trouble extending lines to the rest of Europe. So, in the fall of 1977, the bread truck went back to work, sending those packets across all three DARPA-funded networks — and a few more gateways she had built. Once those packets left SRI’s radio network, they made their way to Kjeller, Norway and on to London via the Arpanet. Then they were beamed skyward from an earth station in Goonhilly Downs, England, before coming down in the little town of Etam, West Virginia, halfway up the US east coast. And from there, they hopped back onto the Arpanet and made their way to USC. They travelled a total of 88,000 miles. And the ping time was about two seconds.